How to Find Authentic Love

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Mary Bielski, a speaker for the upcoming Encounter Steubenville Young Adult Conference, wants you to find authentic love. As a youth minister for 10 years, and founder of ALL4HIM Ministries in 2006, Bielski addresses the challenges of young adults all over the country. One of those challenges is making genuine, tangible relationships. She says, “We are living in a culture with a lot more connection, but we don’t feel connected.” With the rise of social media and online interaction, Bielski says sometimes young people “don’t know how to be human, how to relate.” Because we are made for relationship, Bielski explains, “Deep in all our hearts is a desire for encounter.” So what is hindering singles from discovering this authentic love? Bielski believes there are two false extremes in dating that impede singles from creating sincere bonds that may lead to marriage.

Hook-Up Mentality. The first extreme Bielski sees young people in the Church falling into is the lie of casual dating. The hook-up culture often takes hold in college and is hard to break. She says, “I think it’s easier because when you’re used to being used, you detach yourself emotionally. We’re so sexualized from an early age. What I see is young people doing all these things because they become desensitized to the sexual act.” In reality though, Bielski sees that deep in their hearts, these young people know they are being used and can’t be fulfilled from this mentality. She wants singles involved in casual dating to consider the true longing of their heart and acknowledge “the desire for authentic love which is revealed by Christ on the cross.” That’s a message that takes some convincing. “We see a lot of young people that say, ‘Well, that story is great. But that’s not possible for me.” For those young adults who feel they will never find authentic love, Bielski says, “I think healing is needed and teaching the truth of what love is because deep in their heart, they do long for it.”

Perfectionism. The other extreme Bielski sees in young people in the Church is the mentality that “If I date anyone, I’ve got to marry them.” She says, “There’s this pressure. We wait for that perfect person who is going to court us in six months and it’s all or nothing.” Bielski finds that the source of this mindset stems from fear. She says, “You see young Catholics who are afraid to date, especially young men not asking girls out, or young women who have an ideal perfect guy so we don’t want to settle.” But Bielski asks, “Where do we shift in that? Because we see men that have addictions to pornography, or have their own history or woundedness. I think there is also a fear of our sexuality or a fear of dating. There’s a lot of things that can happen, so instead, we just don’t date.”

For those idealists, Bielski offers advice from her own personal experience, “As I accept my brokenness as someone who devoutly loves the Lord, and as I become aware of my own woundedness, and acceptance of knowing that Christ is redeeming me, and healing me. As I am growing, yet am imperfect, I can also learn to accept others.” Most of all, Bielski says “Rely on the hope of Christ that there is no sin, there is no brokenness, there is no bad family, there is no past history that is outside the redemption of Jesus Christ. Period.” Through this lens, singles can have the courage to move forward in a relationship. She adds, “I’m not saying that we need to settle for scrap, but there’s a process of growing and maturing in a relationship where we don’t have to be the savior and they’re not going to be our savior. We let God work on them and we trust in Him.”

I Haven’t Found the One. Bielski knows the heartache that comes from not finding a spouse. She says, “I solely speak from my own heart as a single woman in my 30s, I get the ache. I think it’s taking your ache to the Lord. And not turning from Him. But I think the hard part that I have to remind myself is that I don’t know God’s will. I want this desire and I know that God wants to fill the desires of my heart, but I also recognize that it’s all in His timing.” Bielski knows that this is not an easy thing to accept, “But I think there is no other answer. The temptation is either we try to fix it and solve it, or we reject God.” But there is another way. Bielski says, “Even in our suffering and even in our weakness, as single women and men, we can take all of it and give it as a gift and an offering and keep our eyes on the promise of who Jesus is. That might mean that some of us, including myself, have got to accept the fact that ‘you know what God? If you’ve called me to single life and it stinks and I don’t like it’, I still glorify your name.'”

Live Your Life. Bielski urges singles to grow in holiness. She says, “We can get so caught up in either ‘he’s not here,’ or ‘she’s not here,’ or ‘I can’t start living my vocation or my life.” Singles end up in a holding pattern where they are not living at all. But she stresses that you can live a full life as a single person. “I think part of the call for young adults is to work on themselves. Staying at the cross and trusting in Him. Learn how to cultivate that ache in healthy ways. Because we can respond to the ache for love and communion in healthy ways or in unhealthy ways.”

Bielski will be tackling the topic of “Debunking the American Gospel” at the Encounter Steubenville Young Adult Conference in St. Louis, MO May 29-May 31. She says, “I think sometimes we think that God came to rescue us and to bring us into freedom, but we think He came to create this perfect world for us, with the perfect spouse, and the perfect kids, and the perfect fence. So when He doesn’t, we feel like He’s failed us where really our lives are to glorify Him.” Bielski hopes to answer the bottom-line questions: “What do we do with suffering? What do we do with our longings when they’re not fulfilled?” The answer will always be at the foot of the Cross. She says, “I don’t think there’s an answer except that we look at the crucified Christ and we stand with Him and in Him offering our suffering and asking for the hope and the grace to persevere till the end.”

For more information and to register for the conference click here.

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